Ready

A sickeningly goody goody movie that bores the shirt off you. Salman, keep yours on

You can never be ready for Ready. There is nothing offensive about it, the movie does not assault sense and sensibility,  promotes family values, disapproves of the mafia as a professional choice, teaches good manners to spoilt children, encourages people to respect the law and pay their taxes, is circumspect about violence and recommends it only when absolutely necessary and in self defence. It is everything you would want to see in a Hindi movie. Unfortunately it also puts you to sleep.

Written like a medieval morality play, Ready is about a well-to-do joint family looking for a bahu for their layabout youngest, Prem (Salman Khan). They send him to pick up a nice girl called Pooja from the airport in the fond hope that he will like her. Instead, he picks up a runaway bride called Sanjana (Asin Thottumkal) who poses as Pooja. She is fleeing her mafia uncles and their choice of a goon for a groom.

When Prem finds out  who she really is, he is fascinated by her mafia family connections, keeps muttering “I love these mafia peoples”, and takes to her instantly. But since he knows that his own khandaan, the Kapoors, would be appalled if he were to be married to the mob, he decides to reform them.

He succeeds, of course, and it would have been lovely to hear him mutter, post reformation, “I hate these decent peoples”, but Ready is a humourless, tiresome, goody goody movie idea from the Deccan Plateau and an astonishingly bad choice for a Hindi film remake with Salman in the lead. The film has a lot of conversation, most of it obvious and pointless, a surprising shortage of action, and a large supporting cast that functions as furniture.

But the shocker is Salman. Screen centre for much of the movie, he puts no work into his performance at all.  The iconic shirtless minute is just not enough.

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Ajit Duara